Investigators work at one scene of a shooting spree in Samson, Alabama. At least 10 people including the suspected gunman and his mother were killed in the shooting spree

Family members of victims of the shooting rampage comfort each other outside a home on Pullum Street in Samson

Although there was no immediate explanation for the killings, police were investigating claims that the gunman, Michael McLendon, 27, was taking revenge for losing his job in the growing US economic slump.

U.S. Army soldiers guard a home with five bodies inside as investigators search for clues

The wife of a sheriff's deputy who lived in a house nearby was also killed, along with her one-year-old child. A three-month-old baby, covered in its mother's blood, was taken to hospital.

McLendon then went on a rampage through the town, killing two more people.

He then drove 15 miles further to Geneva. Two more people are believed to have died, one at a petrol station.

His car was rammed by police on Highway 52, near a Wal-Mart store, where shots were exchanged and the police chief of Geneva was hit in the shoulder.

McLendon managed to get away and was chased to the Reliable Metal Products plant, where he once worked, and fired a 30-round burst in another shoot-out with police. He then shot himself.

Among the police pursuing him was the deputy whose family had been killed.

'While the shoot-out was going on the deputy had no idea what had happened to his family,' said local sheriff Greg Ward. 'This is probably the worst thing that's happened in my career.'

Police investigate one of the crime scenes of the shooting rampage

Frankie Lindsay, chief of police in Geneva County where five people
were shot dead, said the man also fired at officers as they chased his
vehicle in patrol cars.

He said: 'We had set up a road block here
in Geneva anticipating him coming down Highway 52 ... my vehicle rammed
into the suspect's vehicle and slowed him down enough and he pulled out
what looked to me like an AR-15 or M-16 automatic weapon and fired a
burst of rounds into my vehicle and my other officer's vehicle.

'Some of the shrapnel from the bullets entered my shoulder.'

He said the wife and child of a deputy sheriff in Geneva were among the dead.

'This
is probably the worst incident in the state of Alabama that I know of.
I've been in this business for 33 years and this is the worst I've ever
seen.'

The identities of all the victims were unknown, but the Coffee
County coroner Robert Preachers said they included other members of the
gunman's family.

'He started in his mother's house,' Mr Preachers
said. 'Then he went to Samson and he killed his granny and granddaddy
and aunt and uncle.'

'We don't know what triggered it,' Mr Preachers added.

Geneva's mayor Wynnton Melton said: 'Had McLendon not been slowed down, no doubt we would have had more casualties. He was shooting anybody he saw.'

Samson contractor Greg McCullough said at the petrol pump when the
gunman opened fire, killing a woman coming out of the building and
wounding Mr McCullough in the shoulder and arm with bullet fragments
that struck his truck and the pump.

'I first thought it was
somebody playing,' he said. He said the gunman roared into the parking
lot and slammed on his brakes. Then he saw the rifle.

He said the gunman fired and the rifle appeared to jam, then he 'went back to firing'. Then he drove off.

Mr McCullough, a father of two, said he tried to help the woman who was shot and yelled for someone to call an ambulance.

'I'm
just in awe that something like this could take place. That someone
could do such a thing. It's just shocking,' Mr McCullough said.

Police
pursued the gunman to Reliable Metal Products just north of Geneva,
about a dozen miles southeast of Samson, where he fired an estimated 30
rounds from a semi-automatic weapon, the Alabama safety department said.

The gunman then went inside the plant and shot himself, according to the safety department's statement.